A History of the British Cavalry: Volume 8: 1816-1919 The Western Front, 1915-1918, Epilogue, 1919-1939

By Lord Anglesey

In this last volume of a monumental chronicl e, the author shows the part played by the British cavalry i n the First World War. Drawing on material from a number of sources he demonstrates how the cavalry''s superior mobility saved the day time and again. '

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Apr 19, 1995
• ISBN: 9781473815056

Book preview

PREFACE

Justice has never been done to the part played by the cavalry in France and Flanders during the years 1915 to 1918. This volume attempts to do just that. It tries to show that the portrait so often painted by historians, both good and bad, of the cavalrymen sitting in comfort, a numerous pampered and useless body of mounted men, waiting well behind the front line, while the poor bloody infantrymen die horrible deaths in the unutterable misery and fear of the trenches and of the great offensives, is not a picture which corresponds with the facts.

Much of the cavalry’s time was indeed spent far from the battlefields in vigorous training for the culminating moment of truth that never came – ‘the ride for the G’.* Yet at least as many days were devoted to training in an infantry role. Further, large numbers of cavalrymen were extensively employed in taking their turn in the trenches, (much more often than is generally conceded), not of course as constantly as the infantrymen, but sharing to the full the horrors and dangers experienced by them. Those experiences are little touched upon here since they have been discussed in Volume 7 and because they varied hardly at all from the endlessly repeated accounts of them given elsewhere from the infantry’s point of view.

That the cavalry was frequently employed upon every conceivable sort of task which no one else was prepared to undertake is another aspect which is usually neglected. These ‘odd jobs’, many of them involving great danger, were far from glamorous, but after initial disgruntlement were embarked upon with good grace. They included pioneer work, constructing and mending roads, often close to the front, and numerous other ‘non-combatant’ duties, such as digging reserve trench lines. These were chores the like of which cavalrymen had never dreamed of being called upon to perform, for which they had certainly never been trained and which they carried out with exceptional efficiency.

Inevitably, for most of those terrible years, their lot was to be preferred in purely physical ways to that of most of the infantrymen (as, too, was that of many of the gunners). The comparative brevity of their casualty lists is proof enough of this. That many of them were eating their hearts out in frustration is evidenced by the large number of all ranks who tried to get and often succeeded in getting into the infantry, air force and other more active arms such as the tanks and armoured cars.

More important than any of this was the truly vital part played by the mounted troops of the BEF at the worst moments of crisis. Acting as a ‘fire brigade’ they time and again stopped up gaps as only the sole speedily movable element of the force could do. It is not too much to claim that on a number of occasions catastrophes of major dimensions were averted by such action. In this volume overdue recognition of this aspect of their work is given in full.

There is one particularly pernicious myth that needs banishing from the minds of future historians. Even most of the authoritative and reliable of those who have written about the Western Front repeat time and again the fallacious idea that vast quantities of shipping had to be devoted to the provision of forage for the cavalry’s horses. This is nonsense. If the disquisition on p. 286 will not dismiss once and for all this too often propagated falsehood, the present author presumes to believe that nothing will. Though the proportion of cavalry to the other arms was by the end of the war a great deal less than it had been at the beginning of 1915, the actual numbers of cavalrymen became (until the very last phase) considerably greater. At no time, though, did they constitute more than a very small percentage of the total manpower. The same applies to their horses.

Yet another legend has been assiduously propagated by writers of all sorts. No one today accepts Lloyd George’s Memoirs as being anything but economical with the truth. It does not surprise therefore to find him affirming that ‘the army chiefs were mostly horsemen’.¹ The fact is that out of the top twenty-six First World War commanders (including the five CIGS, and all the BEF’s Army commanders and Chiefs of Staff) only eight were cavalrymen. Fourteen were infantrymen and four artillerymen. Of the four CIGS only Robertson came from the mounted arm. Of the twelve Commanders-in-Chief (including those who commanded the ‘sideshows’) only three came from the cavalry. Out of the four Chiefs of Staff who served French and Haig, two were cavalrymen, while five of the ten generals who commanded Armies in the BEF at various times come into that category. In 1918 there were seventeen corps commanders. Only one of these, and, out of the fifty-one commanders of divisions, only five came from the cavalry. So much for A.J.R Taylor’s ‘most British generals were cavalrymen’,² which soon became, in the words of Robert Graves, ‘All our generals were cavalrymen’!³ As John Terraine has put it: ‘The fact that the BEF’s Commanders-in-Chief were both cavalrymen is seen to be a most unusual circumstance. The overwhelming majority of the generals actually handling troops in battle came, as one might expect, from the arm which produced the overwhelming majority of those troops: the infantry.’⁴

Denigration of generals who were cavalrymen in the war occurs in two celebrated works of fiction. Siegfried Sassoon in his semi-fictional Memoirs of an Infantry Officer of 1930 describes a 1916 Army commander thus: ‘He had taken the salute from four hundred officers and N.C.O.s of his Army. How many of them had been killed since then, and how deeply was he responsible for their deaths? Did he know what he was doing, or was he merely a successful old cavalryman whose peace-time popularity had pushed him up on his present perch?’⁵ C.S. Forester’s The General, published in 1936, has on more than one occasion been quoted in serious works on the war,⁶ as showing the mentality of the typical cavalry general, especially is this so respecting what is supposed to be a portrait of Allenby and which Wavell rightly condemned as ‘a grotesque caricature’.⁷

From whatever arm they originated, there is evidence that, contrary to received notions, there were men on all sides who were of the calibre of the much-lauded Second World War generals. Cyril Falls puts this well:

‘Generals from the Western Front who got fresh chances elsewhere – Falkenhayn in Rumania, Allenby in Palestine, Franchet d’Esperey in Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria – manoeuvred fast and brilliantly. The wiseacres conclude that they were bad, hide-bound, mud-bound generals in the west and became good, creative, fertile generals in changed scenes. Is it likely? No, it was the circumstances of the Western Front that shackled them.’⁸*

There has been much unthinking criticism of the high command for keeping in being a respectable mounted force throughout the years of trench warfare. Yet it would have been highly irresponsible of Haig had he failed to do so. Whether the actual numbers were at times needlessly large is a question incapable of an assured answer. Even with hindsight it is difficult to be certain that they were. No one was to know that the time was never to come when the pursuit of a broken, thoroughly demoralized enemy was to be the order of the day. Indeed, had the armistice not intervened to put an end to operations when it did, had, instead, the incipient breakdown of discipline in the German armies during the late summer and autumn of 1918 been given time for full exploitation, a considerable mounted force might well have come into its own.* Certain it is that the tank with its mechanical unreliability, its very slow speed and the small number of the latest improved marks available, would have proved no substitute for mounted men supported by adequate fire power had the conditions for a pursuit ever materialized. It would, though, have taken a large degree of demoralization to silence the amazing efficiency and persistence of the German machine gunners, only a few of whom in the right place and at the right time could make cavalry pursuit suicidal. As it was, with defeat staring them in the face, their performance must command enormous respect.

It has been argued, among others by Ludendorff (though in his case it may have been special pleading), that had the Germans not drastically reduced their mounted troops and dissipated what were left by attaching regiments and squadrons to infantry units instead of keeping at least a few divisions in being as such, the great offensives of March and April, 1918, might have succeeded even better than in fact they did. This argument, though, can only be fully sustained had there been a more universal breakdown of Allied morale than in fact there was. In short, with no mobile alternative to the cavalry, Haig’s decision to hold in hand significant numbers of mounted units was undoubtedly correct.

* * *

As in previous volumes, except rarely and for obvious reasons, only mounted actions have been recounted in detail. Further, those of the other arms have been described only cursorily, except where an understanding of the cavalry’s part demanded a fuller account.

Equally, the numerous controversial decisions taken at political and top military levels, the intrigues, the battles between ‘Westerners’ and ‘Easterners’, the jealousies existing between senior personages, not least among the generals, if mentioned at all, are only lightly touched upon except in those instances where they had a special bearing on the use of cavalry. The operations of the French, often concurrent with those of the British, also receive only passing treatment, unless, again, they particularly illuminate British cavalry actions.

* * *

Much in the way of first-hand evidence is lost, especially at the lower levels of rank, from the activities of the censors, which for the first time in history were comprehensively effectual.

* * *

While the first four volumes made some modest claim to be definitive (in so far as any accounts of human activities in which large numbers are killed and of which the majority of participants fails to give an account can be), the same cannot be asserted for the last four, least of all for this one. The quantity of material is so vast that any possibility of completeness within a reasonable compass, even with respect only to the mounted arm, is quite out of the question. The degree of selectivity which has had to be exercised is prodigious. For example, it has proved impossible even to mention every one of the mounted units of the BEF.

* * *

In Chapter 5 of Volume 7 there appears a considerable amount of information concerning types of officers and men of the BEF, throughout the war on the Western Front, including 1914.

Note. Mons. Christophoros C. Matiatos has kindly pointed out to me that contrary to the footnote on p. 391 of Vol. 4, no regiments of the Austrian cavalry still carried the lance ‘up to and well beyond 1914’. He provides convincing ‘chapter and verse’.

‘War, which used to be cruel and magnificent, has now become cruel and squalid.’

– CHURCHILL in My Early Life

‘The war was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of fate.’

– CHURCHILL in Foreword to Spears’ Liaison,

1914

‘No longer like Frederick at the end of the day do we hurl our jingling squadrons upon the tottering foe. No indeed; better not: they might still have one of those machine-guns with them which refuses to totter.’

– IAN HAMILTON in Introduction to Seekt,

Hans von Thoughts of a Soldier, 1930

‘The latest joke on the front is to call the cavalry the M.P. because they sit and do nothing.’

– CAPTAIN COLWYN PHILIPPS, Royal Horse

Guards in a letter home, 29 April, 1915

‘C for the cavalry who (so I’ve heard it say) Have not seen their gee-gees for many a day. But soon they will mount them and gallop away And we’ll all say goodbye to the trenches.’

– The Wipers Times, 5 March, 1917

‘There seems to be nothing to look forward to – only trenches. Nothing one has learnt seems to be of any use to one. We can only exercise the horses in half sections along a road, as the men are away digging. Nobody knows how to use us or where. Indeed, cavalry in this sort of war seems to be an anachronism.’

– An officer of the 18th Lancers, July, 1915

‘Young officers feel that they are not pulling their weight and want to go where there is more fighting. It is only natural – yet one does not want to lose the best cavalry soldiers we have got.’

– BRIGADIER-GENERAL ARCHIBALD HOME,

late in 1915

‘It would be quite easy in a short time to fit up a number of steam tractors with small armoured shelters, in which men and machine-guns could be placed…. The caterpillar system would enable trenches to be crossed quite easily, and the weight of the machine would destroy all wire entanglements.’

– CHURCHILL to Asquith, Jan., 1915, quoted

in Fuller, Cav. Jnl, 1920

‘It was the only war ever fought without voice control; which came back in World War II with Walkie-Talkie and without which the modern soldier is as completely lost as we were.’

– LIEUTENANT-COLONEL C.F. JERRAM, GSO 1,

46th Division, to General Sir Alan Bourne, GSO

1, 8th Division, quoted in Terraine: WW1, xi

‘That cavalry proved to be an ineffective exploiting arm does not alter the fact that that is what it was. A general who launches what he hopes will be a decisive offensive without an arm of exploitation (as Ludendorff did in 1918) strikes me as criminally culpable. It was in the hope that infantry lives might thereby not be vainly expended that British and French generals brought cavalry up behind their offensive fronts.’

– JOHN TERRAINE in The Smoke and the Fire

‘There is a melancholy comfort in reflecting that if the British and French commanders were shortsighted, the ablest soldier in Germany was blind.’

– CHURCHILL in The World Crisis,

1916–1918, Volume 2

Those who still [in the mid-i930s] speak and write of the fruitless slaughter in the west ought to remember that it was in the west that the war was won and that all that tragic slaughter bore its victorious fruit in the end.’

– DUFF COOPER in Haig, Volume 1

‘The history of this war will never be written. Those who could write it will remain silent. Those who write it have not experienced it.’

– BINDIN, RUDOLF (German officer) in

A Fatalist at War

* The ‘G’ stood for gap. The phrase originated in the Boer War. It evolved from the practice of describing a featureless location on a sketch map lacking grids, by using the lettering appearing on it as if it actually existed on the ground, thus: ‘A mile NE of the first o in Tiger Kloof Spruit.’

Full marching order for the cavalry came to be known on the Western Front as ‘gap organization’. (Whyte and Atteridge, 344)

By early 1917 the word ‘gap’ had been officially dropped ‘as it had become almost a term of derision’. In its place ‘operations beyond the trench system or some such phrase came into use.’ (Darling, 73)

There were jokers who purported to believe that ‘G’ stood for ‘Gee-gees’.

* There was a time, some thirty or forty years ago, when there was a spate of what Terraine calls ‘Instant History’ concerning the First World War. The most contemptible of this genre is Alan Clark’s The Donkeys (1961). This was designed to denigrate at all costs both French and Haig during 1915. That it is full of deliberate falsification of simple facts is not to be wondered at. What is more pitifully despicable is that by selectivity and omission, he perverts the meaning of numerous quotations from important documents. A typical example of Clark’s intentionally misleading method concerns the cavalry. ‘In the Expeditionary Force,’ he writes, ‘it seemed that there were nearly as many regiments of horse as of foot.’ In a footnote to this extraordinary statement he adds, ‘Actually the proportion was eighteen cavalry to seventy-eight infantry, but seventeen cavalry regiments were in the line compared with only forty-two infantry battalions.’ (p. 15) If this makes any sense at all it indicates that the assertion in the text is (to be charitable) meaningless! The funniest specimen of Clark’s ignorance is his ‘polished Shakos’ of the French cuirassiers, (p.14)

The most unfortunate thing about this deplorable travesty of history is that it was influential in the making of a sensational and amusing film, Oh! What a Lovely War, thus spreading a totally false story to millions of people.

It is distressing, but, alas, no surprise, to learn that Clark received ‘the greatest help at every stage of the development of the book’ from Liddell Hart, as well as assistance from Captain Bickersteth, whom he describes as ‘the historian of the Cavalry Brigade’, thus again displaying his ignorance or carlessness. Bickersteth’s book dealt with the 6th Cavalry Brigade, only one, of course, of those engaged.

Terraine’s brilliant criticism of The Donkeys (‘Instant History’, JRUSI, CVII, 1962, 140-44) ought to be read by everyone who embarks on works connected with the Western Front. (So, too, ought Bond, B. ‘Judgment in Military History’, JRUSI, Spring, 1989 and Mearsheinzer, J. Liddell Hart and the Weight of History, 1988, as well as Wolff, L. In Flanders Fields, 1958).

In 1927, thirty-four years before Clark’s book appeared, Captain P.A. Thompson of the RASC wrote one entitled Lions Led by Donkeys, Showing How Victory in the Great War was Achieved by Those Who Made the Fewest Mistakes. Unlike Clark’s, Thompson’s book is dull but honest. In an ‘Apologia’ he wrote

‘If you, who read this, were one of the Lions, do not forget that throughout those four years you were unable to find any others more capable of leading you. Nor do I intend to confine the meaning to ourselves alone, for while we made some bad mistakes we never equalled the grand miscalculations of the German High Command. So for my sub-title I have adapted Napoleon’s definition of the best General.’ (p.iv)

In 1961 there were many old lions left. If they believed Clark’s parodies of those who led them, their consternation and distress must have been harassing indeed – everything they endured wasted by incompetence. Another aspect of his service to historical truth!

* But see p. 272. Chronic supply difficulties, which were not, and perhaps could not have been foreseen, would probably have made any far-reaching exploitation impossible.

1

‘They were short of troops and no cavalry were wanted by then, so they dismounted us. It was a terrible come-down. To be turned into infantrymen was like being pole-axed. Of course, we weren’t very good at walking at the best of times, never mind in those conditions. We’d just arrived in France and they gave us a couple of weeks’ infantry training at the Bull Ring until we were ready for the slaughterhouse. We went up to relieve the Canadians. We’d never seen anything like it. Going up through this area it was just as if an earthquake had been there. It was all mud and I was frightened to death.’

–TROOPER REG LLOYD, Cheshire Yeomanry

(attached to 8 Bn, S. Lancs Regt), early 1916¹

Life in trenches and billets – bus transport – trench improvements – recreations – working parties – leave

At the conclusion of Volume 7 of this work the first battle of Ypres had come to an end and the Indian Cavalry Corps had been formed. The cavalry had already learned what trench warfare involved, for it had taken its share of the manning of the trenches. From these it had been gradually withdrawn so as to form a mobile reserve south-west of Ypres, but only for a short period. At the beginning of 1915 it found itself again sharing trench duties with the infantry.

On 31 January the Cavalry Corps relieved the French for a month in the trenches near Zillebeke, each division doing ten days in turn. In Flanders the fighting was limited throughout the winter to sniping and long-range duels between the rival gunners. The chief enemy was the weather. ‘The whole situation,’ wrote the 4th Hussars’ Commanding Officer, ‘is most weird. The landscape just one big shambles; not a soul to be seen because everyone is hiding in a trench…. But law! The filthiness of it all: knee deep in mud and debris of every description – not excluding corpses, which seem to be everywhere…. The trenches are all ditches and half the parapets are falling in.’² Early in January the cavalrymen found themselves being transported to the front in London buses, with their windows boarded up and complete with their own drivers and conductors. It took eleven buses to move a regiment and thirty-six to move a brigade. For the first time in its history, instead of moving on horseback, by foot or by train, the cavalry was being carried along by means of internal combustion engines. From this time dates the military term ‘to embus’.

At this stage the trenches were still very primitive. The parapets were far from being bullet proof, the traverses*, too, where they existed, were insufficiently thick. There were very few communication trenches which meant that men had to climb over the top to get from one trench to another – a dangerous business which could only be undertaken at night. In spite of an overall acute shortage of sandbags, the 1st Cavalry Brigade alone used over 10,000 of them during its week in the line in February. The brigade also in that time managed to drain their trenches of two feet of water and to ‘corduroy’ their floors with faggots. Only by continual pumping, day and night, were the trenches made habitable.³

These appalling conditions took their toll in a decline in the men’s health. Many of the 13th Hussars after only twenty-four hours had ‘to be lifted out of the trenches owing to being cramped with standing in the mud and water for so long,’ and within a fortnight the 17th Lancers had sixty-five men admitted to hospital with what was at first called frost-bite but later trench feet. In due course this joined the list of military offences. It was caused chiefly by the shrinkage of the men’s long woollen pants round the knee and calf and by too tight puttees. Long gumboots did not arrive in numbers until late February. Both cod-liver oil and whale oil were soon issued. Applied to the feet and up to the waist, these certainly helped to keep men warm and effected a marked decrease in trench feet.⁴

The nastiest ingredient in the nasty business of trench warfare was the nightly ration party. It was very hard labour and the men hated it:

‘The enormous weights to be carried – heavy ammunition boxes, biscuits, bully beef, beside of course each man’s own rifle and ammunition and many other things such as parcels, rum jars, extra entrenching tools, etc. – the darkness and difficulty of keeping touch, the rough ground, pitted with shell holes, the extreme probability of being shelled or sniped or both….

A regular trench organization devised for cavalry

Dismounted Cavalryman (on way back from trenches, seeing Officer’s servant exercising a horse). ‘Well, if anything gives me sore feet it’s seein’ an ’ighlander ridin’ where I’ve got to pad the ’oof.’

‘Throughout the war’, says the historian of the Oxfordshire Hussars Yeomanry, ‘the men always preferred the front line, where the strain was frequently broken by spells of comparative peace, to the incessant and wearing fatigues of the support and reserve trenches.’⁵

* * *

During First Ypres the strain placed upon cavalry units in the trenches as compared with that experienced by the infantry had been manifest. It was now exacerbated by the increasing shortage of officers and by the fact that by early February there was also a shortage of men. In the Oxfords, for instance, each squadron was short of nearly sixty and could only find fifty-seven or so rifles, ‘forty men being required as horse-holders, cooks, shoeing smiths, transport drivers, etc.’ Cavalry Corps headquarters devised a regular trench organization to avoid the absurdity of 200 men going into the line with twenty officers where the infantry took only a third of that number for an equivalent number of men. Each brigade now provided a dismounted battalion, each regiment finding a dismounted company, battalion headquarters being found by each regiment in turn. Later on this system was modified, it being found that it was more convenient to occupy the trenches in the cavalry formations. ‘It was soon realised by infantry staffs that a dismounted cavalry brigade was only slightly stronger than an infantry battalion.’ Appropriate arrangements were henceforth made. There is some evidence, incidentally, that the officers took a full share in the work of improving the trenches, ‘handling pick and spade with their men and helping to fill and carry up sandbags’. The ‘infantry-ization’ of the mounted arm was proceeding apace! This process, beside requiring a radical change of outlook on cavalrymen’s part, presented other difficulties

‘You can see,’ wrote home Captain Eve of the 13th Hussars, ‘what it is, trying to make us do two jobs at the same time, cavalry and infantry. The men are simply worked off their legs and haven’t a minute all day…. We do all our cavalry parades, all these infantry ones, route-marches, afternoon parades, fatigues, evening classes, &c., &c., and they complain if the men don’t turn out smartly on parade. In spite of all this we are to organise games and let the men train for cross-country runs and so on. Whenever can they possibly have time? And I must help the country people in their farming in my spare time.’ (See p. 17).

During the following winter Major Charrington of the 12th Lancers, in describing life at that time, took a more relaxed view:

‘The men sleep in little farms and cottages round about, with, of course, the usual night guard over the horse lines. We have early morning stables at 6.30 when we rub the horses down and try and restore a little circulation in the poor brutes after these cold wet nights; so they are well hand-rubbed, and if wet wisped down with straw, then fed; breakfast for all ranks is at 7.30. At 8.20 we go for two hours’ exercise or training At 10.30 the horses are watered, for though they are watered at early morning stables they very seldom drink except after a very hot night; they can think of nothing but the nosebag that awaits them. Then at 11 we have stables till 1 and the horses are given a really good grooming and are watered and fed. Then dinner, after which the men generally are free till 4 or 4.30 when they come and groom and water and feed the horses, finishing about 5.30. Evening meal at about 6. Of course if there has been bad weather or we have been a lot on the march we always seize the afternoons to clean saddlery, arms and kit. And what with bomb-throwing parties, classes for signallers and M.G.’s, fatigues for drawing forage, digging latrines and cleaning up generally, it is not often that we get much rest in the afternoon…. The hours all depend on circumstances.’⁶

Almost the greatest pleasure afforded troops coming out of the line was the provision of baths. The men of the 2nd Life Guards enjoyed ‘a hot bath in a brewery at least once a month’, while the 11th Hussars, in the aptly named Ecole de Bienfaisance at Ypres, found it ‘a queer experience lying in a hot bath with the deafening noise of shell-bursts echoing down the corridor’.

There occurred on 21 February what the 16th Lancers called ‘the worst day of the war’. At 6 a.m. the first large mine of the war was exploded under the front trench occupied by a squadron of the 16th Lancers. Immediately afterwards two more were detonated, completely destroying the trench. The Germans at once followed these up by a strong attack. Confusion and hand-to-hand combat ensued. The three reserve squadrons counter-attacked but failed to regain the lost trench. Eventually the 20th Hussars and some French infantry tried again, but failed to recapture it. No further attempts were made and a new trench was dug in rear of it. The 16th lost five officers killed, one wounded and one (blown into a German trench) made prisoner. Seven other ranks were killed and forty wounded or missing.⁷

By the last half of February immense improvements had been made in many of the trenches. The Oxfords on their second visit to the front found that ‘dugouts, traverses, fire-steps, communication trenches, were now universal’ and that ‘weak points’ were ‘revetted with timber and the bottom floored with duck boards’. Some of the finest trenches were those occupied by the Northumberland Hussars Yeomanry. The skill of the pitmen who formed a considerable part of the regiment proved invaluable for construction and drainage. By the end of the year a further transformation had taken place. Even the trenches

‘which had so impressed us a year before,’ according to the regimental diary of the Oxfords, ‘were primitive when compared with these. Battalion headquarters were in the biggest dugout we had ever seen. You went down about ten steps which brought you to a narrow corridor, leading to a kitchen on the left and to the officers’ quarters on the right…. Down another flight of twenty steps was the officers’ sleeping-room, containing three bunks and a stretcher. The rooms were about the size of the cabins on a good cargo steamer and the kitchen was as big as many kitchens in small private houses. There were two pretty good officers’ dugouts, high enough to stand up in and all the men had dugouts also. One of the dugouts actually contained a wicker-work armchair, a luxury very rarely found even in billets. Our trenches were 800 yards behind the front line, with which they were connected by a perfect labyrinth of communication trenches, turning and twisting in all directions, crossed by six other lines…. There were signboards at most of the crossroads, but even with their help it was very easy to get lost, especially at night. In fact the whole sector resembled nothing so much as the maze at Hampton Court magnified 100 times, with walls of chalk instead of shrubbery….

‘The trenches were very good, mostly boarded and quite dry. There were no dugouts in the front line, but shelters here and there made of half a dozen stout logs thrown across the trench and covered with plenty of earth and a sofa-shaped seat for two cut out underneath.’⁸

The first home leave started in November, 1914. At first batches of four or five officers and eight men from each squadron went every five days for ninety-six hours. This liberal arrangement did not last long. ‘This is the Week-End War with a vengeance,’ wrote Captain Philipps of the Blues in optimistic mood. The officers, in those early days, travelled ‘in comfort to Boulogne in our own motor-cars, unharassed,’ as an officer of the Oxfordshire Hussars put it, ‘by officious RTOs [Railway Transport Officers].’ In the 5th Dragoon Guards, the men’s leave was temporarily cancelled, ‘there being cases of overstaying leave’. From the following winter, 1915–1916, leave was generally granted for seven days, sometimes for eight.* As the war wore on all sorts of different arrangements were made, much less generous than in 1915, but officers rarely had less than two leaves a year and other ranks seldom more and sometimes less than one, generally for eight full days at home. In August, 1917, the men of the 5th Dragoon Guards were granted ten whole days. None of them had been on home leave for ‘at least eighteen months’. By the winter of 1917 the men who had been in the BEF up to the end of 1915 were granted in principle seven days every six months, while those who had arrived after the Somme were allowed fourteen days after fifteen months, yet by 1 January, 1917, there were some 4,000 of all ranks who were awaiting leave after eighteen months. There were two main reasons for this paucity of home leave: an acute shortage of cross-Channel transport and, especially during the months before the great German Spring Offensive in late March, 1918, the crying need to employ fighting troops for the purpose of constructing strong defensive systems behind the front line – a need much exacerbated by Lloyd George’s persistence in holding back at home large numbers of men in an effort to curb Haig’s use of them in offensives. (See p. 169)†⁹

* * *

For most of the time the cavalry regiments were in billets. ‘We have quite gone back to peace conditions,’ wrote an officer of the 12th Lancers early in 1915. ‘All bits and steelwork are burnished. The winter training which we are going to do will be very dull for those who have seen the real thing.’ Before that training got fully going sports were arranged for the men: football, of course, while the Oxfords played hockey, ‘introduced into the regiment about this time [March, 1915]’.¹⁰

The officers organized some traditional recreations for themselves. The first regiment to play polo in France were the Oxfords – on troop horses. Enterprising officers in other regiments ‘brought back a few couples of harriers and beagles from leave in England and started hunting hares’, while the officers of the 17th Lancers found relaxation ‘through the medium of some hounds, the property of M. Maillard, whose kennels were in the neighbourhood… The pack was mixed Artois hounds, English fox hounds, beagles and Basset hounds, about sixty couple in all. But they afforded excellent fun.’ The Leicestershire Yeomanry were naturally to the fore where hunting was concerned. ‘A pack of foxhounds, four and a half couple, were sent to them from the Quorn, Cottesmore and Lord Harrington’s, and the regiment hunted hares and sometimes a drag over the country about Cassel.’ In February, 1918,

FRANCE, 1915

(An Infantryman’s libellous idea of how various military branches go to War!)

‘hares were extraordinarily abundant in the district around Peronne, but in deference to French susceptibilities the use of hounds or dogs of any description, for purposes of sport, had been forbidden very early in the war. Some genius, however, evolved the pastime of coursing hares on horseback. The element of danger was considerable, as the country was very rough, and there were many sunken roads, while the numerous old camping-grounds, naturally a favourite resort of the hares, were covered with every variety of pitfall. The intense fascination of the sport, however, made it more and more popular, and with increasing numbers taking part in it the roll of casualties began to mount up alarmingly. At last, when three brigadiers were hors de combat at one and the same time, it was impossible to keep the secret any longer and the practice was at once forbidden.’

Throughout the war various forms of hunting, mostly illicit, were indulged in. The 12th Lancers, in May, 1916, organized a boar hunt. ‘As the kill took place right under the windows of the chateau which harboured Cavalry Corps HQ, by whom la chasse was forbidden, none of the field of six, which included two masters of fox hounds and two whips of the Pytchley, lingered on the scene.’ Horse shows were arranged at all formation levels. On 15 August, 1917, a divisional horse show took place which was, as the historian of the Deccan Horse put it, ‘an unique occasion, as never before had there been such a gathering of cavalry regiments drawn from all quarters of the Empire; no fewer than twenty-six British, three Canadian, five Yeomanry and eleven Indian regiments being present.’ These horse shows sometimes included esoteric races, such as one for ‘two-horsed water-carts’. There were foot races too. Private Batchelor of the Oxfordshire Hussars in June, 1917, described some of them: ‘competitors had to run fifty yards, drink a mess-tinful of beer, undress, run back and light a cigarette and run back and dress and then run to starting-place. Winner, J. Boyles. Cook’s Race. Run fifty yards, light a fire, cook an egg, eat it, and run back to starting-point. Winner, Taylor, fifteen francs and a bottle of whisky.’¹¹

Recreations: horse shows

Programme of ‘D’ Squadron Oxfordshire Hussars Yeomanry’s Horse Show

An officer of the 4th Dragoon Guards found that ‘the best method of getting partridges for dinner was to find a covey and gallop them, particularly in the snow, when after about three flights they were exhausted and one could dismount and wring their necks.’ Milder amusement was procured through the gramophone. Major Valentine Fleming* of the Oxfords brought one out from England, ‘at that time rather a rarity, though afterwards to be found in almost every mess in the British army’. Officers’ clubs were set up in the bigger towns. In 1916 the 10th Hussars found the one in Bethune ‘excellently managed’. There was also in the town ‘an excellent oyster shop in the Square’. In Ypres well into 1915 Fortnum and Mason maintained a shop. ‘Everything we want,’ wrote an officer of the 18th Hussars, ‘seems to be available.’ In the Essex Yeomanry ‘a military and string band was formed and admirably trained by R.Q.M.S. Joscelyne; it was only after the serious casualties at Monchy [see p. 81], in which engagement many of the band were killed, that it became impossible to keep it going.’ When at long last trench warfare came to an end in late 1918, the VI Corps Club, and no doubt others, moved continually forward

‘at a safe distance from the front line, but not too far back to be out of reach of the fighting troops when in rest. It was a godsend to tired officers. It consisted of a large marquee and one or two smaller ones near by. Comfortable armchairs and a large selection of newspapers were provided; meals were to be had by passing officers, and camp beds by those stranded late at night on their way to or from England; above all, one could get one’s hair cut there, cleanly, efficiently and in comfort. It was of course impossible to provide anything on so elaborate a scale for the men, but for them also baths, cinema shows, pierrot troupes and other sources of comfort and amusement travelled permanently in the wake of the Corps. Things,’ wrote an Oxfordshire Hussar, ‘had changed indeed since 1914.’

In 1917 the 5th Lancers were entertained by ‘the ladies of the Lena Ashwell Concert Party from Abbeville’.* They gave a concert in the Maintenay village hall, ‘which was much appreciated by all ranks’.¹²

The historian of the Bays gives a good description of life behind the lines of a winter’s evening:

‘The Divisional Supply Column at Arneke, officers and men of the R.A.S.C., made a very welcome and successful contribution to the recreation of all ranks by organising a concert and dramatic company, known as ‘Les Choses.’ They had some musicians amongst them, including an exceptionally good amateur violinist in the person of their French interpreter. There were two or three who had had the advantage of experience behind the footlights of London variety theatres before the call to arms made them soldiers. One of them proved to be a first-rate stage manager. A large shed at Arneke station was converted into a theatre. The Royal Engineers supplied the electric lighting. An artist, with large tarpaulins for his canvasses, provided very fair scenery. The orchestra started with a troop of mouth-organ performers, but soon developed into something more ambitious, and long before the season at Arneke ended there was an array of violins, wood and brass wind instruments, and drums, directed by a conductor in a dress-suit imported from London!

‘The audience came from all parts of the billeting area. Officers arrived in motor-cars, rank and file in lorries. There were gala nights, when the front seats were crowded with officers of all ranks, with a General in the middle of the first row. There would be a good programme, and everything was so well organised that it was strange to realise that the whole show was within hearing of the distant mutter of gun-fire round the Ypres salient. A standing joke in one of the comic interludes was the question: Is it true there is a war going on? and the reply, Well, I have heard rumours of something of the kind.’

On 25 October, sixty-one years after a famous battle, the 13th Hussars held a ‘Balaclava sing-song for the men’. At Christmas, 1915, the Cavalry Benefit Association sent ‘cardigan jackets, vests, gloves and plum puddings’, while, out of the canteen proceeds, each man received 1 Fr. 50.¹³

* * *

Between November, 1914, and December, 1915, the headquarters of the 17th Lancers occupied thirty different French villages. The same sort of number applied to most other units. The regiment’s historian describes well ‘the arts of billeting’:

‘The advanced party, consisting of the second in command of the regiment and of the four squadrons, with an N.C.O. each and an interpreter, went on in advance of the main body. The primary object of the second in command on arrival was to find a château for headquarters, if available. This, or a pis aller, having been obtained, a tour round the various areas to be allotted to squadrons was undertaken. Should the area under inspection seem salubrious, with large farms where a troop or more could be put, every effort was made by squadron representatives to catch the Speaker’s eye; if, on the other hand, only poor accommodation seemed available, it was with difficulty that anyone could be seen on the horizon to whom the area could be allotted. By the time the Regiment had arrived, the squadron areas had been subdivided into troop areas, which were as often as not rearranged by the squadron leader and again surreptitiously changed by the squadron sergeant-major.

‘The allotment having been done from the top, complaints forthwith started de profundis. The scattered musketry of section commanders, supported by the light artillery of troop leaders, with finally the heavy bombardment of squadron leaders, was lulled to rest by the pacific efforts of the adjutant, a very Solomon, who could gaze on the battle with equanimity from his castle walls. Much practice soon taught every man where to find a suitable hangar for the horses and space for saddles, and, in spite of the billet-snatching propensities of every officer and man, order soon reigned where chaos had been.’¹⁴

Householders were given an allowance of a franc a day for putting up an officer. This inducement and ‘the honour of entertaining an officer, thus proving their house of a status above that of a vulgar cottage’, usually ensured that rooms for officers were willingly provided. An officer of the 2nd Lancers (Gardner’s Horse) reported that it was

‘always difficult to find rooms for messes and kitchens, as no government allowance was given for them, and the inhabitants found it very